What if the baby has dry scalp?

Dry scalp - a problem that causes a lot of trouble and adults, and young children. Dry skin is almost always the presence of dandruff and increased vulnerability, such skin is much easier to injure even with a regular comb. What to do if a child has dry scalp, we will tell in this article.

With dry skin, children are not born. For all newborns without exception, the scalp has a protective lipid layer, the task of which is to protect the baby from drying out of the skin. Dry skin may result from improper hygiene and from a metabolic disorder.

Most often, the parents themselves destroy the lipid film, too often using soap, detergents while bathing the child. The scalp, deprived of its natural protection, becomes weak, thin and lifeless. Its permeability becomes higher, and the baby can be infected at any time with a fungal or bacterial infection.

Special children's care products, such as powder, can make the skin very dry. Some parents use it to powder diaper rashes and prickly heat, not only in skin folds, but also in the region of the neck, where prickly heat appears quite often. Talc, which forms the basis of the powder, is capable of draining the scalp of the infant.

The reason may lie in imbalance of substancesif baby has congenital thyroid problems, as well as the result of problems with other glands due to improper nutrition. Food or drug, as well as contact allergies can provoke dermatitis, which also leads to drying of the skin on the hands, head, feet.

Dry skin looks pale, with faint cracks. Skin flakes can flake off during scratching and are well distinguishable. Scars and wounds may appear on the child’s scalp, small abrasions that he himself causes by inaccurate combing.

Quite often, dry skin itches and itches. In places scratching microcracks are formed, which penetrate pathogenic bacteria and fungi. These places look inflamed, they can form pustular elements, which, after breaking through or injuring, become covered with a yellowish dry crust.

Hair in a child with dry scalp grows slowly, usually brittle and thin. Due to the increased dryness, baldness can begin.

A few simple tips:

• The baby should be washed with warm water, boiled in advance, so that there is no hint of chlorine in it. Neither soap nor shampoo should be used until the child is 1 year old. Once a week you can wash your baby’s head with soapy water.
• After a year, you should use only hypoallergenic baby shampoos that contain moisturizing oils.
• A good purchase would be a humidifier with a built-in hygrometer. It will allow to maintain the level of moisture that is necessary for skin health (normally it should be in the range of 50-70%).If such a purchase is not affordable for the family, it is possible to humidify the air in other ways - by putting an aquarium in the nursery, hanging it on batteries during the cold season with the heating turned on wet sheets and towels.
• Dry scalp requires special, careful care. After taking a bath, it should be additionally moistened with the help of vegetable oils, peach, apricot, and petroleum jelly permitted in childhood. Well moisturizes the epidermis and the usual children's cream.

• Dry crusts should be soaked with oil for 20 minutes before bathing and combed with baby scallops with neat teeth, which do not hurt or scratch the delicate infant skin.
• The apartment should maintain a certain level of temperature. The higher it is, the drier the air. Therefore, it is important that the house was not more than 20-21 degrees of heat. It’s better to warm a frozen baby than to increase the temperature in the room.
• A visit to the baths, saunas only increase the manifestations of dryness. Children with such a problem should not be in such places, and when visiting a public pool where water is chlorinated, you should always cover your head with a rubber cap.

• Bed linen of the child should be washed only with hypoallergenic powder, approved for use in childhood, after washing the sheets and pillowcases, it is necessary to additionally rinse with clean water.
• A baby with dry scalp should not wear caps if it is at home. Headgear for such children is a necessary necessity, they need to be worn only on the street, to the clinic, on a visit.
• The child must eat right, take all the necessary vitamins, as well as drink plenty of fluids.
• Of the folk remedies, the child can be helped by baths with chamomile decoction, as well as aloe juice, which is diluted in half with water and applied to the scalp.
• Dry hair with dry skin of a child with a hair dryer is absolutely impossible. They should dry naturally - in the open air.
• You should not shave a child with dry skin a bald head a year. Having lost the protection in the form of hair, the skin will become even more vulnerable.

If all the measures taken by the parents to eliminate dryness were not crowned with success, the child should be shown to the dermatologist. This specialist will prescribe the necessary tests and consultations with a gastroenterologist, nutritionist, pediatrician. After establishing the true cause, the main treatment begins and the nutrition, lifestyle and hygiene habits are adjusted. Useful procedures for ozone therapy and mesotherapy.

All funds must be harmoniously supplemented. circular light massage of the scalp. EGo can be done to children from 2 months. The procedure helps to improve the blood supply to the skin, to work the sebaceous glands, which are responsible for the production of lipids.

On how to get rid of the scabs on the head of a child, see the following video.